Scientists at Harvard have brought to the world a futuristic advance which may or may not be the human race’s first step toward a violent cyborg uprising. For the first time ever, they have created a 3D hybrid of living tissue and electronics. They’ve mixed muscle cells, neurons, and blood vessels with nanowires and transistors, effectively creating cyborg tissues.

This first generation of the cyborg tissues are limited in their function, but future generations have almost endless possibilities. They could be used for all kinds of monitoring activities, from drug testing to medical observation of ongoing conditions.

But the most exciting and most creepy possibilities involve actually controlling the cells in a human body via the integrated nanowires. This could be accomplished through electrical stimulation or even through controlled releases of drugs. Lab-grown cyborg tissues could be used by the pharmaceutical industry to easily measure the effects of new drugs on real three-dimensional tissues rather than the thin layers of cell cultures currently used.